All things French, from Mme Slack to Mme Tussaud.

Fourth grade. Sister Francis of Rome rolls a small black and white TV on a metal cart into the classroom. Time for Madame Slack, a beautiful french lady who hosted ‘Parlons Français’.

She was doing distance learning before anyone knew what it meant. She was beautiful and very French, with her bouffant hair and her perfectly manicured red nails. Madame Slack’s 20-minute, twice-weekly language lessons were interwoven with photographs and film sequences she shot in France during the summers, as well as conversations with puppets, all of it intended to give us early exposure to French language and culture.

And so began my connection with french.

I spent my high school years studying languages. I guess I took some science and math courses, but all I remember is one geometry final that I thought I had aced. I looked at the big red F on the exam paper the teacher handed back to me. I thought there must have been a mistake. I’ve always been a hopeful person.

Madame O’Brien was my French teacher my junior year. Bless her, she must have known her grammar, but her accent left a little to be desired. She was no Madame Slack. Come to think of it, I had a lot of french teachers who had never quite gotten the hang of the pronunciation part. Her pronunciation of O’Brien landed like a lead balloon. O-bree-on…; no gutteral R, no nasal ending. One of our texts was called ‘Lettres de Paris’. I can still hear her calling out in her flatt, dull french, “N’oubliez-pas der lire Lettruh der Parrreee!” as we all dashed out of class as quickly as possible:

In college, I studied French with the school president, Sister Marie Louise, who massacred pronunciation with the best of them. Mon Dieu, she massacred the language and tried to massacre us all. How do you say ‘battle-axe’ in French? BUT, I sat next to a beautiful girl from Switzerland. Her french music to my ears.

I gradually became fluent through teaching, hosting exchange students and…singing. Music is one of the best ways to learn language. Don’t think, just sing!

Thirty years later, I recorded an album of French music, a wide-ranging collection of songs I had heard over the years. My sister, Geddy, came home from college with an album of Françoise Hardy. Françoise was the Yé Yé girl of the 60’s. I just looked her up. She is 79, alive and well, and living in Paris. If you’re out there, Merci, Françoise!

We wore very deep grooves in that record. I memorized a lot of the songs. A few of them showed up on my album. But what should I call it? I didn’t have to think long before Madame O-bree-on came into my head. That’s it! I thought. Lettres de Paris!

My dear friend (and incredible jazz drummer) Marc Gratama recorded that album in an upstairs bedroom of his house, hence the ‘Bedroom Accident Productions’ studio name. He convinced the legendary Boston trumpeter Herb Pomeroy to join in the fun. Herb traipsed up the stairs into the bedroom. A long trail of wires led from the first bedroom filled with mics and musicians, down the hall into the second bedroom, where Marco the Magnificent engineered the project.

And then there was Piaf. I dove deep into her music and created a one-woman show. One woman, one accordion player. I don’t remember when Roberto Cassan and I crossed paths, but I was one lucky kid. Roberto was Italian to his bones. I think he was born, fully sprung from the brow of his mama, with an accordion strapped to his chest.

Roberto joined me in NYC french chansons for the opening of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. The museum people showed us to the room where we should set up, then they left us there for a while…with Woodie Allen, Jodie Foster and Dan Rather, among others.

Knowing languages has opened so many doors, let me in on so many inside stories, hidden restaurants, local secrets. Speaking a foreign language is a special gift, to be cherished. The world becomes friendlier, smaller and kinder.

We are all brothers and sisters. And you don’t even need to know the language - just be interested in how the other guy talks. Ask her how to say ‘hello, how are you? ask him how to say ‘please, thank you’ and try to repeat it. (the try to repeat it part is important) Eyes light up! I know how to say thank you in Egypt, Turkey, Albania, India. My notes are full of phonetic spellings. My husband is very patient when I entertain (for the 100th time) any Russian I meet with ‘etta potolok’ (this is the ceiling) or the very impressive German ‘wenn ich nur meir Gelt gehabt hätte, wäre ich ins Kino gegangen, (if I had had more money, I would have gone to the movies).

Chatting with the locals.

I spoke recently with a kid bagging groceries at my local supermarket. I asked him my favorite question for all the young workers there. What’s your favorite subject? Spanish, he answered. Oh! I said. That is a gift to the world! When you can say something in the other person’s language, they light up! You will have great adventures. His smile lit up the checkout line.

Stay curious.